Homeless People Across San Diego County Counted in Annual Pre-dawn Census

Matthew, who lives in his car, with his pet parrot Jackson, are counted by a volunteer team in Allied Gardens on Jan. 29, 2026. | Photo by Thomas Murphy / Times of San Diego | Click on image to enlarge

Long before the sun rose Thursday morning, 1,700 volunteers assembled at over 50 sites throughout San Diego County for the 2026 Point-in-Time Count.

The event, run by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, is an annual survey that aims to track homelessness, used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to allocate funding. This tracking effort has been ongoing since 2014 – only canceled in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic – and aims to provide a yearly minimum estimate of how many people are experiencing homelessness.

The Copley-Price Family YMCA was one such site with 85 volunteers split into teams and given maps showing the county tracts they were responsible for searching. In addition, they were given 7-Eleven gift cards and socks to be distributed to the people they surveyed.

Before the count started at 4 a.m., Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera addressed the room, reminding everyone that “The folks who you are counting are being told in more and more ways that they do not count. You being willing to go out there and ensure that they are not just counted as a number, but their stories accounted for, is so, so important.”

Site coordinator Sofia Cardenas from Alpha Project stressed the importance of having year-over-year comparison, saying “We can see trends and changes in the population. We can see what’s working, what’s successful.”

Last year, there was a 7% drop in the homeless population from 2024, falling from 10,605 to 9,905 people. While that result is encouraging, it was too early to proclaim it a trend until the 2026 count has been tabulated.

Once a year, volunteers fan out throughout San Diego County to find homeless people on the streets, in canyons and parking lots and more for the Point-in-Time Count | Photo by Thomas Murphy / Times of San Diego | Click on image to enlarge

At 7 a.m., the team discovered multiple groups of people living in cars at College Grove Center. Among them was Matthew, who has been homeless for two and a half years, with his mother and Jackson, a pet parrot he has owned for five years. He reflected that they once had the opportunity to get an apartment, but were turned away because they refused to part with Jackson.

Mike, Stacy and Zeus, a German Shepherd mix, spoke with Dewey outside of Crunch Fitness. They explained that they frequent this spot to utilize the 24-hour gym’s showers. They share a membership with other parking lot regulars.

Though the count started slowly for them, by the time it concluded at 8 a.m., Group 12 had cleared its stock of 7-Eleven gift cards and pairs of socks, handing out every single one.

Here's the rest of the story . . .

By Thomas Murphy | January 29, 2026 | Times of San Diego

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EDITOR: This story caught my attention because it states that there are still about 10,000 homeless on County of San Diego streets, in cars and canyons and generally without residence.

I foolishly thought that number would be lower because I thought I remembered that former Supervisor Nora Vargas had spent a lot of money on the homeless.

"In 2024, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, led by Chairwoman Nora Vargas, heavily funded homelessness and migrant services. Key allocations included over $71 million for general homeless services, $19.6 million in federal funding for a migrant transition center, and initial $6 million in county funds for migrant shelter."—KPBS

Reading the article above more closely, a lot of the funds went for migrant homeless, not local homeless.

"I am thrilled to announce that after months of tirelessly advocating for funding, the federal government has allocated $19.6 million to support the thousands of asylum seekers who are coming across our border. Our work is not over, and we are now working to adopt a sustainable, federally funded migrant transition center in San Diego County. As we learn more details on the funding in the coming days and weeks, I look forward to working with our partners to maximize these critical federal dollars for our region."—Supervisor Nora Vargas

I do know that many of the grants Supervisor Vargas promised did not make it to the grantees when Ms. Vargas abruptly left her position. Max Branscomb never received a dime of his Bonitafest Melodrama grant. I sure that same fate fell on several others that had been promised grant money.

I wonder what happened to all that money.

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